Category: ori investigations

A psychiatry researcher who received a warning letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration earlier this year committed research misconduct, another federal watchdog found.

Bret Rutherford, formerly a research psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University, “engaged in research misconduct by recklessly falsely reporting that all human research subjects met the inclusion/exclusion criteria for late-life depression studies,” according to a case summary from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) published today.

As The Transmitter previously reported, a suicide that occurred during one of Rutherford’s trials in 2021 was followed by a suspension of his research a few months later. The U.S. Office of Human Research Protections subsequently halted all federally funded research involving human participants at the institute in June 2023 and launched a review of its research practices.

Continue reading Former Columbia University psychiatrist committed research misconduct, says federal watchdog

In 2021, the provost of the University of Maryland, Baltimore sounded the alarm about a troubling batch of papers from the lab of Richard Eckert, the former chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the institution. 

The provost sent letters to the editors of seven journals calling out a string of serious issues.  Based on the university’s investigation, the papers contained duplicated, fabricated and falsified data, according to emails obtained by Retraction Watch. 

But more than three years later, the results of those alerts are mixed: Of the 11 papers the university flagged in 2021, editors corrected three and retracted two. Six still await resolution, with no apparent action taken by the journals. 

Continue reading Exclusive: One university’s three-year battle to retract papers with fake data

A former research fellow at Harvard Medical School faked data and used images from another scientist without attribution in a published paper and two grant applications, according to findings from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity. 

The researcher, Arunoday K. Bhan, was also a former staff scientist at City of Hope Medical Center in Duarte, Calif., and first author on “Human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived platelets loaded with lapatinib effectively target HER2+ breast cancer metastasis to the brain,” which appeared in Scientific Reports in October 2021. The article has been cited eight times. 

The paper was retracted in March. The retraction note cited an investigation by City of Hope and detailed “discrepancies in the data” that match ORI’s findings. 

Continue reading Former Harvard cancer researcher plagiarized data, federal watchdog says

A former department chair engaged in research misconduct in work funded by 19 grants from the National Institutes of Health, according to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity. 

Richard Eckert, formerly the chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and deputy director of the university’s Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center, faked data in 13 published papers and two grant applications, ORI found. 

The ORI finding stated Eckert “engaged in research misconduct in research supported by” every NIH grant on which he served as principal investigator, totaling more than $19 million. The finding also lists multiple “Center Core Grants” worth hundreds of millions for shared resources and facilities at research centers. 

Continue reading Former Maryland dept. chair with $19 million in grants faked data in 13 papers, feds say

A former professor and vice provost for research at the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in New York, falsified data in two published papers, according to findings from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI).

Shaker Mousa, who was also chairman and executive vice president of the Pharmaceutical Research Institute at Albany, already has at least 10 retractions and two corrections, by our count. 

The falsified data appeared in “Tetraiodothyroacetic acid-conjugated PLGA nanoparticles: a nanomedicine approach to treat drug-resistant breast cancer,” which appeared in Nanomedicine in 2013, and “The proangiogenic action of thyroid hormone analogue GC-1 is initiated at an integrin,” which appeared in the Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology in 2005 and was retracted last September. ORI called for Mousa to request a correction or retraction of the Nanomedicine paper as well. 

Continue reading Pharmaceutical researcher faked data in two papers, says federal watchdog

A well-known content creator and former lab technician at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas admitted taking “several shortcuts” in work that has been found to contain falsified data funded by the National Institutes of Health, according to a U.S. government watchdog.

Darrion Nguyen, who has more than a half-million followers on his TikTok account “lab_shenanigans,” engaged in research misconduct while working at Baylor by “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly falsifying and/or fabricating experimental data and results” of several research records, two manuscript figures, a research progress report, a poster, and a presentation, the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) said.

Continue reading ‘Lab shenanigans’: TikTok influencer faked data, feds say

In a recent Science editorial, Barbara Redman and our Ivan Oransky called for a boost to the budget and authority of the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI). In this letter, a nephrologist and researcher suggests one potential way to fight fraud.

Bravo on your editorial, which pointed out the pathetic funding level for an agency that is supposed to put a check on self-interested fabrication and distortion in scientific research.  Perhaps universities and influential individuals who feel the threat of censure have collaborated to minimize that risk by throttling the Office of Research Integrity (ORI).  Regardless, billions of dollars each year are probably lost in misdirected efforts based on false information. That is a national tragedy.

During the time I was an undergraduate at Caltech we had an honor code that was very clear: You cheat, lie or fabricate and you are at best heavily censured, and likely out.  We learned that one’s research notes were our reputation, and that our supervising senior researchers would often and unpredictably ask to review them.  It was daunting and occasionally very stressful, but led to a lifelong ethic that stood me in good stead when I went into medicine, where peoples’ lives were at stake based on what we wrote and did.  

Continue reading Could ‘write once/read many’ discourage cheating?

A U.S. federal agency that oversees research misconduct investigations and issues sanctions appears to be doling out punishments fairly, according to researchers who analyzed summaries of the agency’s cases from the last three decades. 

But the authors of the study also found more than 30 papers the ORI said should be retracted have yet to be.

The researchers looked for associations between the severity of penalties the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) imposed on scientists it found responsible for research misconduct and their race and ethnicity, gender, academic rank, and other qualities. The researchers published their findings in late November in Accountability in Research, as the agency is in the process of revising its key regulations, 

According to the new analysis, ORI’s sanctions correlated with factors indicating the seriousness of the misconduct, such as being required to retract or correct publications, but not with demographics. 

“We did not find evidence of bias,” Ferric Fang, a professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine and one of the study’s authors, said. 

Fang, also member of the board of directors of The Center For Scientific Integrity, Retraction Watch’s parent nonprofit organization, told us: 

Continue reading What analyzing 30 years of US federal research misconduct sanctions revealed

Retraction Watch readers may know that the U.S. Office of Research Integrity, which has oversight of misconduct investigations of work funded by the National Institutes of Health, has proposed changes to its regulations. It’s the first such proposal since 2005, and has generated discussion in various quarters. We’re pleased to present this guest post by James Kennedy, a longtime observer of these issues.

One of the most controversial points about the federal policies for research misconduct is the extent to which a laboratory director, principal investigator, or lead author is held responsible for misconduct by others on their research team. 

It is surprisingly common in cases of extensive research fraud that the person who committed the offense cannot be identified. Data management in such cases is usually uncontrolled, with no tracking of changes to the data or preservation of the original data. The principal investigator is often at the center of the pattern of misconduct, but should they also be held accountable for it when the only provable fact is that they allowed a work environment that was vulnerable to bad behavior?

The regulations for handling misconduct in research funded by the U.S. Public Health Service are currently being modified, and the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), which implements the rules, is asking for public comment. This opportunity to influence the handling of misconduct is all the more important given that the regulations are often used as a model for misconduct policies at universities and research institutions. The comment period was recently extended until Jan. 4, 2024.  

Are you responsible for misconduct by others?

Continue reading Guest post: Why I commented on the proposed changes to U.S. federal research-misconduct policies – and why you should, too

Purdue University has reached a settlement with the federal government to pay back grant money the institution received through applications submitted with falsified data, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana. 

The settlement resolves allegations under the False Claims Act related to the case of Alice C. Chang (who also uses the name Chun-Ju Chang), a former associate professor of basic medical sciences at Purdue’s College of Veterinary Medicine in West Lafayette, In. Inside Higher Ed reported first on the settlement.

Last December, the U.S. Office of Research Integrity found Chang had faked data in two published papers and nearly 400 images across 16 grant applications. As we reported then: 

Continue reading Purdue agrees to pay feds back $737,000 for grant submissions with fake data